ODESSA, Ukraine (Mennonite Mission Network) – On Apr. 24, Vladimir Pomazkov, president of Odessa Theological Seminary in Ukraine, congratulated Mary Raber of Mennonite Mission Network on the successful defense of her doctoral dissertation. Raber researched the “Ministries of Compassion among Russian Evangelicals, 1905-1929.” Her degree was awarded by the University of Wales through International Baptist Theological Seminary in Amsterdam.
Raber said, “I got interested in [this subject] because I have spent a lot of time with different church groups that are involved in working with homeless children, or rehabilitation centers for alcoholics, or care for the elderly. They assume that this is something new that Christians have been able to do since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I got to wondering what the historical precedents might be. I chose 1905-1929 because those were years of relative freedom for evangelical believers, just at the end of the Russian Empire and the beginning of the Soviet Union.”
Raber plans to incorporate insights gained from her research into her teaching at the Odessa seminary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
Photographer: Larisa Iusipenko
